SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 18 March 2006 — There are only female voices to be heard in Emina Hidic’s apartment. Her mother gasps and sobs as she tells her decade-old story of a place called Srebrenica. Hidic’s 12-year-old daughter speaks quietly, sweetly. She has grown up in a family robbed of its men, in a home where sadness lingers like a permanent scent.
But on an evening in mid-December, news from America made Hidic suddenly smile.
One of the eight men who lined up her two brothers and about 1,200 other Muslim boys and men in a field in Bosnia during its civil war more than 10 years ago and then shot them dead was in custody in Massachusetts, a Newsday reporter told her.
She smelled justice at last. The United States had Marko Boskic, one of the killers of the Srebrenica massacre, the worst war crime committed in Europe since the end of World War II.
“They should condemn him for the crime,” said Hidic, 33, sitting in the living room of the apartment she shares with her mother and daughter in a suburb of this still war-scarred city. Framed photographs of her murdered brothers sat on shelves. Her husband also is missing, presumed to be among the more than 7,000 murdered during the entire Srebrenica massacre.
In December, Boskic was facing only immigration charges, but it was still possible the US attorney in Massachusetts could file the much more serious charge of torture — a federal crime that carries the death penalty for acts of torture overseas that have led to death. But on Jan. 10, the US attorney’s office filed a one-sentence status report in US District Court in Boston, explaining that “it is not the government’s intention to seek a superseding indictment in this matter.”
When told in January that the United States did not intend to charge Boskic with any crime other than lying to immigration authorities, Hidic was at first silent on the telephone from Sarajevo.
Then she spoke.
“That is outrageous. I have no words to express what I feel,” she said. “So he will be let go after he had killed so many people? Is that for real? Terrifying.”
Since then, Bosnian prosecutors and US federal authorities have begun discussing how to try Boskic in Bosnia. A Department of Homeland Security agent has traveled to Sarajevo to help the new Bosnian State Court for War Crimes prepare an extradition request. But officials warn such requests are complicated and not guaranteed to succeed in US courts.
And while Boskic may ultimately face justice in Bosnia, the Justice Department’s decision not to prosecute him thus far for torture means there is unlikely to be a precedent-setting case and therefore, some officials say, no deterrent message for other war criminals considering making America their home.
Frustrating to many law enforcement officials and tragic to victims like Hidic, Boskic’s is a single example from hundreds of cases of suspected foreign war criminals, torturers and human rights abusers who have made the United States their home. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the successor to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, is litigating 779 such cases concerning suspects from more than 85 countries. Agents from ICE are investigating 264 cases. There is some overlap so the total figure is about 1,000. They are soldiers, interrogators, commanders — many of them America’s former enemies — who have taken advantage of the US welcome to refugees, especially from war-torn countries. With the victims, law enforcement officials say, come some of the killers.
War crimes investigators in the United States and other countries say the reality is that most of the thousands of mid— or low-level war criminals living overseas or in their home countries will escape justice due to a lack of political will and courts designed to prosecute people like Boskic.
When they find them living in the United States, federal prosecutors and investigators essentially have two choices: Prosecute them for the potentially capital crime of torture, or charge them with lying during their immigration process and deport them as soon as they have served a relatively brief prison sentence.
Under US law, deportees usually can choose to go to any country that will have them. Often, prosecutors can do little but hope the torturers and killers will face justice elsewhere.
The United States enacted a torture statute in 1994, but not a single case has been brought. Some investigators, prosecutors and human rights activists worry that while US law does not give foreign torturers impunity, the fact that the torture statute has not been used has made the United States an attractive destination.
And some investigators and human rights advocates worry that the Justice Department, under Attorney General Alberto Gonzales — author of a controversial White House memo that critics said effectively sanctioned the use of torture by American interrogators overseas — would never allow the statute’s use for fear it could be used on US soldiers or intelligence agents.
Boskic’s participation in the Srebrenica massacre of Muslims is well chronicled.
In 1996, Drazen Erdemovic, Boskic’s former comrade in the 10th Sabotage Detachment of the Bosnian Serb Army, testified during his trial at The Hague war crimes tribunal that he and Boskic were members of an eight-man squad who shot dead the unarmed Bosnian Muslim men who had been bused to the farm north of Srebrenica.
In 1996, Boston Globe reporter Elizabeth Neuffer interviewed Boskic in a cafe in the Bosnian town of Bjieljina. When she asked why Boskic killed the men at Pilica, Boskic eventually replied: “Would you like to get whacked? I want you to forget this street and this restaurant. It doesn’t exist anymore for you. Don’t come looking for me anymore. I cannot guarantee the safety of your lives.”
Investigators credit Neuffer’s reporting for their initial awareness of Boskic, who by chance ended up living in Neuffer’s own city.
It is likely the two witnesses would testify against Boskic given their past cooperation and the close ties between the prosecutor’s office in The Hague and US investigators, an official connected to the case said. Boskic’s apparent admission to investigators of his involvement in the massacre was considered another crucial piece of evidence, officials involved in the case said.
Samantha Martin, a spokeswoman for the US attorney’s office in Boston, told Newsday that the Jan. 10 status report does not preclude the possibility of further charges being brought against Boskic. The office declined to comment further.
With possible torture charges now apparently unlikely, Boskic could be out of US custody before long. He already has served almost 18 months in federal detention awaiting trial on the immigration charges. As an ethnic Croat, he may try to obtain Croatian citizenship, although US officials consider it unlikely the Croatian government would welcome such a well-chronicled suspect. And even though he served in the Bosnian Serb Army, Serbia is unlikely to grant him citizenship because the 10th Sabotage Detachment has long been Serbia’s favorite scapegoat for the Srebrenica massacre because many of its soldiers were ethnic Croats and even Muslims.
A successful extradition request, however, would result in Boskic being sent back to Bosnia and into the custody of the state court.
The massacre of the Srebrenica Muslims represented a failure by the international community as countries including the United States failed to endorse the use of significant NATO air strikes, now almost universally seen by historians as the only way the killings could have been prevented.
In the aftermath of the massacre, The Hague tribunal has convicted six Bosnian Serb soldiers and officers of crimes committed at Srebrenica. Eight more are in pre-trial status and another ended this weekend when former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic died in prison. Three suspects are at large, including former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his general, Ratko Mladic, alleged masterminds of the massacre.
